


Intertwined

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Time Wants to Happen, Timeline Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-08-15 19:38:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8070097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: Kronos' life has always been empty, for as long as he's known about it, ever since the Time Masters picked him up and made him a weapon, and he's been fine with it. 
Maybe Kronos has only been fine with it because he didn't know a better option was out there, because he's burning with the need to know. The need to go and see, to figure out who this person was, this Cold guy, and see how he could mean so much to someone like Kronos.





	1. Chapter 1

Kronos drinks because he can, because there is shit all else to do at the Vanishing Point. It's one of the miserable truths of this place, the sort of thing you get accustomed to as time goes on - ironically enough, since time doesn't really pass here, strictly speaking. There's nothing to do but work, and work is all there is to do; working and waiting. Even the food is dull and uninteresting. So you drink. 

Normally Kronos would be sitting with Bunya, trying to see who can get the drunkest and make the ennui pass faster, but she's grumpy today and busy, too; the Pilgrim must not have had an easy time of it on her last mission. So he drinks alone and perhaps he drinks too heavily, because he totally forgets to turn on his stasis inducer and now he needs to piss or else he'll burst.

He staggers out into the hallway, squints at the restroom all the way down the hall, says fuck it and opts for a nearby closet instead. It's not like the mechanical AIs of the Vanishing Point won't vaporize it before it ever hits the ground. They're useful that way. Though he still turns his personal AI tracker off, because there's some things a thinking being doesn't need to see, robot or otherwise. 

He empties his bladder and sighs, leaning his forehead against the cool wall of the closet. It's nice and cool - not his usual preference, but pleasant. He can hear people passing the closet - a supply closet - on both sides, the back-way entrance to the Bounty Hunter canteen and the front-way hallway utilized by the Time Masters on their way to the viewing halls. Egotistical, hierarchical bastards; they don't like mixing with the hoi polloi like Kronos or even Bunya, and she’s their special favorite.

" - entirely wise? Particularly given Kronos' attachment -"

He raises his head with a frown, sobering up. That's coming from the Time Master corridor; why're they talking about him?

Kronos sneaks closer to that side of the corridor, pleased now that he'd turned off Ginny; the Time Masters wouldn't be able to track his exact location unless they asked for it specifically. 

"I doubt any of us anticipated the sheer difference involved," one of them was saying wryly. Kronos arches his eyebrows; it's not like the Time Masters to admit that they didn't have total control over _everything_. Usually they just pretend that it's all part of some overarching plan right up until the last possible moment when they have no choice but to admit it's all gone to shit, and usually a little beyond that, too. "Though perhaps we should have. Separating the two of them was something of a strain on the timeline; their timelines were extremely intertwined."

"I wouldn't have expected that Kronos would have had that much of an impact on anyone," the other replies, making Kronos frown. Intertwined timelines? Impact? Who the hell are they talking about? Kronos has no one in his life that he cares for deeply enough for it to ping the timeline, and no one who cares deeply enough for him; that’s what makes him a perfect Bounty Hunter. That’s the whole _point_ of the Bounty Hunters – that no one misses them. 

"It went both ways," the first one says wisely. "They were giant figures in the original timeline, in their own way, and the untangling proved rather knotty. Haven't you'd noticed how different Kronos is? At least he's still as effective as before; I was rather concerned for a while."

No, actually, Kronos hadn't noticed, although that’s obviously the point. Who the hell is this guy that they’re talking about?

"That's why I'm concerned," a third one says. "Normally I would simply petition Declan to assign Kronos the mission and be done with it, but given how intertwined Kronos and Cold were..."

"It's not like it's an issue anymore," one says, his voice fading as the Time Masters walk onwards. "But if you're concerned, send another one of the Hunters instead, perhaps two or three..."

Kronos strains his ears, but they've moved too far away and he can't activate any of his armor's gadgets without revealing his location. He leans against the wall instead, mind racing.

It's not that it's necessarily uncommon for the Time Masters to adjust the timeline, even up to the point of untangling intertwined individuals when it suits them, and - while rarer - that sort of manipulation has been known to happen to individuals underneath Time Master control, like the Bounty Hunters. Though Kronos has never heard of them doing a full on untangling on a Hunter, because that’s just – that’s – well, that’s a pretty nasty punishment. Taking away someone who you fit with so well that the timeline has trouble identifying you as two separate people, someone you blended with so much that they’re more you and you are them than you are two people; you don’t do that just for anything. Not even the Time Masters.

And sure, you're not supposed to remember someone you've been untwined with, because in the new timeline, you never met them and never had a chance to intertwine your lives. But - the Time Masters still remember it, enough to be concerned about potential consequences, and damnit, Kronos doesn’t _feel_ altered. Kronos has _never_ had anyone he cared about to that extent – or so he thinks now, anyway. 

He slips out of the closet and activates Ginny, his AI, who pops up, bright and cheery and amused. "Gin, sober me up," he orders and flinches when she does. He hates the abrupt detoxification process; it always dries his mouth out something awful. It's supposed to be used for poisons, but Kronos figured out pretty quick that it works on liquor, too.

"Is everything all right?" Ginny asks anxiously. She knows he prefers to suffer the hangover unless it’s absolutely necessary.

"No," Kronos says honestly, because it's not. It's one thing to help stop the timeline from being messed with, but he always thought it was a little off to mess with what had already been in place, people that through their own fate or free will met other people, made a life, only to have that life undone through no fault of their own. 

Kronos' life has always been empty, for as long as he's known about it, ever since the Time Masters picked him up and made him a weapon, and he's been fine with it. 

To think that he had has someone, someone who meant enough to him to affect his timeline enough that the Time Masters called them _intertwined_...a lover, a spouse perhaps, a _partner_...and to think they _took it away_ from him – 

Maybe Kronos has only been fine with it because he didn't know a better option was out there, because he's burning with the need to know. The need to go and see, to figure out who this person was, this _Cold_ guy, and see how he could mean so much to someone like Kronos.

Now that Kronos thinks about it, actually, he can't quite remember how or when the Time Masters picked him up, the surefire sign of a decaying timestream. 

"Can I help?" Ginny asks.

"Can you keep a secret?" he asks, activating her special subprocess that the Bounty Hunters use whenever they want to bitch about the Time Masters. Mick's not sure who discovered it or why the subroutine was originally created, but it's sure as hell useful. 

"Yes, Kronos," Ginny says happily. Her voice is a little younger than the prototypical Gideon model, a little more cheerful; she'd been passed over time and time again by other Hunters for being too girly before Kronos came and picked her first above all, because he knows – and he doesn’t know how he knows – that being girly and young doesn’t make you any less viciously efficient. Kronos knows that her devotion is to him above all else, even before the Time Masters. She knows he knows it, and they both know that it’s an aberration that ought to be eliminated; every day he doesn't report her only strengthens their bond. And they've been together for some time now. "We are now secure. How may I assist?"

"I need to run a secret search on the Oculus," Kronos says grimly. "Timeline target: me. I think I've been wiped."

"Erased?" Ginny says, alarmed. She doesn't want him to disappear.

"Grossly altered," Kronos corrects. "Notable enough that traces ought to be left behind."

"Running the search now, Kronos," Ginny says, and folds herself back into her projector unit to start working.

He nods and goes to find Bunya.

She's still in her Pilgrim outfit, which seems even more fetish-gear-y than usual (the Time Masters like to pretend they're above such things as lust, but the way they dress their women tells you everything they need to know). "Kronos," she says warmly when she sees him, though she doesn't smile with her face. They're an odd pair: everyone assumes they're fucking, of course, and Bunya had even offered once, early on, but Kronos had been strangely unwilling and so they'd become friends instead.

Unwilling, hah! More like the timeline grabbing hold of him, the tendrils of fate trying to push him back onto the path he'd left behind. The first tenant of time travel: time wants to happen. Time leaves a groove as it flows endlessly forward, and it wants to be back in its rut. It takes serious efforts to redirect it, even temporarily, and it usually makes you pay a price for it like the bitch it is.

The Time Masters think they're above it all with their secrets and their rituals and the Oculus, which no one is supposed to know about so naturally all the Bounty Hunters do, but Kronos had ridden the timeline enough to see the Time Masters foiled by what seems like chance or bad luck, but what is really the timeline rebuilding itself by force. The Time Masters have such short-term plans, nudges here and there, it always seems like it works out, the timeline good and altered to achieve their ends; they never bother checking their work a few months or a year later, after the timeline has sneakily rewritten itself using speedsters or accidents or sheer bloody-minded stubbornness. The Bounty Hunters, who go out and actually walk the tracks on a regular basis, see it much more often. 

"You are thoughtful," Bunya says, frowning. She knows how much Kronos detests introspection. "Come, walk with me and we will talk."

She leads him to her chamber, the decompression of stasis clicking on as she does. Bunya is the Time Master's greatest weapon, going back to kill targets before they become a threat, but it comes with a steep price: little by little, as she unravels the timelines of others, she too is unraveled. Bunya is not the first Pilgrim, nor is she likely to be the last, and she tells Kronos in their lost moments together, curled up in the pocket of un-time that is her quarters, that she hopes she is killed and takes her curse with her instead of passing it along to her successor when the Time Masters decide to relegate her to the discard pile.

The stasis of the time pocket does make for an excellent secret place to talk, though, especially with Ginny working on backing it up. Everyone, even the Time Masters, always assumes that the only reason a man and a woman like them could want privacy is to screw.

Kronos threads his fingers through Bunya's. "I think,” Kronos says slowly, watching her face, wondering if she knew, “that my timeline got altered.”

She nods slowly. "I had heard something," she confesses. "I did not know - we had not yet met, you and I, though I had seen you. You were Kronos, before, but a different one. Angrier."

It has been a long time since Kronos has been anything other than apathetic. Anger - rage - is almost unthinkable. But it is intriguing. He'd like to feel things that strongly again.

Huh. He hadn't realized that he'd already made his decision, that he was going to find this Cold and find out about him; he'd thought he was still thinking it over. Well, that makes this conversation more straightforward, at least.

"I was intertwined, according to the Masters," he says. Bunya's eyes widen.

"Intertwined," she echoes wistfully. Kronos knows how she feels: to be truly intertwined, two timelines inseparable, is one of the most breathtaking sights in the timeline. Soulmates by choice and effort, two people who love each other so much that they keep coming back to each other both in life and through death itself, forcing the very timeline to accept them as a single entity, never one without the other – it’s beautiful.

The Time Masters hate it, of course.

"I want to find him," Kronos tells the Pilgrim, the weapon of the Time Masters, their fiercest assassin, knowing that what he is asking is nothing short of treason. The Time Masters untangled him; they likely had a reason, but the reason might be nothing more than wanting a fuller control over Kronos. They’re that petty. To oppose them is to oppose everything he has ever been taught, yet he finds the decision easy, almost laughably so. Time wants to happen. Kronos _wants_ to find this man. "Will you help me?"

She smiles, cold as chips of ice; his friend, his Bunya, his John Bunyan, she who he named as a joke one day and earned his very first smile-without-a-smile, and she says: "Yes."

Kronos bows his head in recognition of what he has asked of her. "You know they'll kill us if they find out."

"Let them try," Bunya says fiercely. "I know the timeline better than anyone, and if I take your strand, they will not be able to assign anyone else to hunt upon it. I have absolute priority over any given timeline."

"You can only do that with one strand of time, one life, at a time," Kronos points out. "What about yours?"

Her smile turns bitter. "I don't have a childhood anymore," she says, and Kronos winces; she’d been degrading faster and faster these last few months. She’d spent some hours telling him stories from her childhood a few weeks back: he remembers the act, but the stories themselves are blurred even in his mind, gone forever, the memory lost along with the slowly dissipating timeline. "I lost the last bits of it, just last week; the Oculus ate it in a shower of blue sparks. I still have a few snatches of adolescence, but who knows how long I will have that. What's the worst they do to me? Kill me? I welcome it."

Kronos squeezes her hand. It is not easy being the Oculus' proxy, the Pilgrim on her endless Progress through time, slowly unraveling as the timeline takes revenge for her services to the Time Masters. Bunya is loyal because she has been taught to be, from the very first, but she is smart and she is independent, and she stays now only because she has no better option.

"I'm having Ginny run a search for time-scars in my timeline," he says, holding out his arm-piece and typing the command for Ginny to show what she has found so far, projected as a hologram.

Bunya hisses when she sees the results of Ginny's not yet half-done search and Kronos is right there with her in her shock: there are temporal scars _everywhere_ in Kronos' timeline. The Time Masters' manipulations aren't so much degrading in the timeline as they are being swamped with it, time forcing its way back. There will need to be a readjustment soon, a maintenance, just to keep it from going back on its own and damn the consequences – the worst sort of temporal adjustment. If something is not done, there might be serious trouble.

Luckily, Kronos has every intention of doing something. But instead of _maintaining_ the current timeline, he’s planning on helping the readjustment back to the original status quo along; Kronos is perfectly aware that his discovery of the matter, so fortunately timed, is very likely the timeline’s interference in an effort to push him and this man back together, but he’s surprisingly okay with that. They were _intertwined_ , this man and him. To go from a life of pure apathy and disinterest to one like that – well, timeline, interfere away. 

"You must have loved whoever it was very much," Bunya says. "And they you."

"No kidding," Kronos says. He can’t wait.

"Did you hear a name?"

"Yes," he says, oddly reluctant to share it. "They called him Cold."

Bunya straightens. "Cold?" she says sharply. "Captain Cold?"

"Maybe? Why, do you know of him?"

"Kronos," Bunya says. "He's one of the Malefactors.” At his blank look, she adds, “The chief governmental and enforcement body of the Legion of Doom. He's a murderer, psychotic and ruthless by all accounts, and the Great Plains of North America are ruled under his iron fist. It’s not a minor position, or a figurehead one; he’s currently one of the most premier leaders of Earth."

Most people might be intimidated. Kronos just feels more alive than ever before.

"Well," he says, wild smile growing on his face. "This is a guy I've clearly _got_ to meet."


	2. Chapter 2

“Should I be insulted that he did better without me than with me?” Kronos muses as he lolls back in one of the chairs on Bunya’s ship, Vanity Fair. It’s a nice ship; much better than the loaners he usually takes out when he goes out on mission. But such is the difference between the Pilgrim and mere Bounty Hunters like him, even if he is a very good one.

“Depends on how you define better,” Bunya says peaceably as she preps the ship for launch, supervising the onloading of supplies, equipment, tech. “Goody, is my micromanipulator onboard?”

“Yes, Pilgrim,” Goody says, her voice calm and soothing. Apparently, Bunya and Kronos are the only ones who think so; everyone else who’s encountered her claims to find her voice nasal and somewhat irritating. “I have taken the liberty of bringing on board all three versions thereof.”

Neither Bunya and Kronos had actually _told_ their AIs that they were going on an unauthorized mission, quite possibly a one-way one if the Time Masters decide to be bitchy, but their AIs were both loyal and clever, and the ship is almost suspiciously well-loaded and well-armed without either of them saying a word where the Vanishing Point's AIs could hear it. 

“I have also equipped Kronos’ main and secondary weaponry,” Goody adds. “As well as a retained earlier model which had been placed into storage.”

“An earlier model?” Bunya asks, frowning. “Why would we keep an earlier model in storage?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Goody responds.

“I think I might be able to assist you,” Ginny chimes in. The two AIs have always had a cordial relationship. “The item in question is currently non-existent in the present timeline; it bears the markings of a timeline remnant, as well a certain degree of temporal radiation, implying its origin in a previously stable timeline.”

Kronos sits up straight in his chair. “They have a weapon I used to use but don’t anymore, probably as a result of the timeline adjustment?” he asks interestedly. Another step closer to who he used to be before the changes; he wonders what past-him thought was superior to his rifle and sidearms. “Will anyone notice me taking it?”

“While I believe that may have previously been the case, it was recently mislabeled and placed into open storage as assorted past weaponry,” Ginny says. “I will bring it on board along with a set of back-up arms, designed for temporary timeline proxy companions.”

“Do that,” Kronos orders, nodding in approval. The Time Masters wouldn’t worry too hard about something like _that_ ; it’s practically a free-for-all in the armory when it comes to back-up weaponry that you might want to take with you into the field in the past. Timeline proxy companions – individuals from the relevant time period recruited to aid the Time Masters and the Bounty Hunters – never got weapons half as good as the real Time Masters, anyway, so really no one cared.

“I mistrust the sloppiness of this effort,” Bunya says. “Time clearly wishes very strongly for you two to reunite, if it has infiltrated the Vanishing Point.”

“Maybe it’s tied in with other aspects of the timeline change,” Kronos suggests. “I heard Orion just last week complaining about how the 21st century isn’t as cheerful as it used to be.”

“The Legion of Doom’s conquest was a major event,” Bunya says, nodding. “One that appears relatively new to the overall timeline – and not necessarily one the Time Masters expected. Though it doesn’t seem to interfere with their overarching plans, so they’ve left it alone for now.”

Kronos grunts. “Looks like Cold traded up after all.”

“Again, it depends on your definition,” Bunya points out. “Would you prefer to be a master of the Earth or to be happy?”

Given that Kronos _was_ potentially giving up a job that involved roaming through time in order to just _meet_ the guy, he doesn’t bother to dignify that with an answer. 

Cold might not feel the same as him, though: he’s been flipping through the guy’s record, and he’s a stone-cold bastard by all accounts, with a tendency to ice – literally – people who displease him. Interestingly enough, he has no meta abilities, despite being the Malefactors’ meta wrangler: Central City, North America, is both his hometown and the seat of his government, and he runs both the recruitment and training of meta-humans and their eventual organization into hit squads. He’s on good terms with Luthor, the organization’s leader and money-man, and Merlyn, information and surveillance, but on bad terms with Darkh, sorcery and demolition, and Thawne, the Malefactors’ speedster assassin, the latter probably due to Cold’s rapidly advancing tech R&D effectively neutralizing Thawne’s advantage, both futuristic and speed. He remains cordial but distant with the other Malefactors.

Still, it’s fairly impressive: most of the others were born to money or power, but Cold clawed himself up from – quite literally – the dustbins and prison cells of Central to a position of dominance over the majority of North America and (bizarrely enough) Kyrgyzstan, the Falklands, and the Pacific Islands. Though personally Kronos suspects that he only keeps Kyrgyzstan to piss off Darkh, who otherwise controls that portion of the world. 

And somehow hooking up with Kronos kept that from happening. Was it really fair to go interfere with Cold’s life now?

“You made the decision,” Bunya says, reading the whole thing on Kronos’ face. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“It’s a lot more to give up,” Kronos points out. “Besides, I don’t think he can just _quit_.”

“Then become his mistress and rule middle America,” Bunya says waspishly. “What’s the problem?”

Kronos barks a laugh. “Let’s be off,” he says, amused. 

“Activating sequence now,” Bunya says. “Prepare for jump – I don’t want you throwing up on my floors, you space-sick bastard.”

Kronos grumbles good-naturedly. He hasn’t thrown up in ages, but flying too fast does still roil his belly if he doesn’t sleep through it. Bunya calls in their fake flight plan to the registry AI and heads out.

No one thinks to stop them.

Bunya sets their course for the mid-2010s. 

“Do you know, I think I’m just around Cold’s age?” Kronos says contemplatively. “Of course, that makes sense, what with the intertwining, but I do have to wonder how we met. Childhood friends? School friends? Adulthood? What did we do together?”

“Judging by your respective careers apart,” Bunya says dryly, “I assume it would be something violent.”

Kronos smirks.

“I do have a question, though,” she continues, fussing on the console even though she doesn’t need to. Kronos arches his eyebrows in silent question. She frowns a little, then looks at him. “What’s your name?”

“My name?”

“Yes,” she says. “I know you as Kronos, which is so thematic it _must_ be a Time Master invention, and you are not – ah – in my unique circumstances, so you must have had one before that. And Cold would have known you by that name, not as Kronos.”

“You’re right,” Kronos says with a frown. He must have had one, but he can’t remember it now. “Huh. No idea. Victim of the induction process, do you think?”

“We should find that out,” Bunya says wisely. “Goody, if you please? And while you’re at it, what is Cold’s name?”

“I assume if he goes professionally by something like _Captain Cold_ , that’s got to be a chosen moniker…”

“But imagine if you hit it off! You can’t possibly shout out ‘Cold’ in a moment of high passion; he might assume that was a hint to turn down the air conditioner.”

Kronos gapes at her. “I’m going to go _meet_ the guy, not _seduce_ him,” he protests. “Also, what the hell? You’re planning out our sex scenes now? We were intertwined, that doesn’t mean we were fucking. He could be my brother or ugly as sin or something. ”

“This is true,” Bunya concedes. “Ginny, since Goody is occupied, could you pull up a reference photo of our Captain Cold?”

Ginny obliges.

The two of them contemplate the smirking 3-D image for a long moment.

“I take it back,” Kronos says.

“If you do not sleep with that man, Kronos,” Bunya says. “Fair warning: _I will_.”

“That’s legit,” Kronos says. 

“Pilgrim,” Goody says. “I have located the information you requested.”

“Well?”

“It appears that Captain Cold’s original name was Leonard Snart –”

“That’s awful,” Kronos says admiringly. “Almost makes 'Captain Cold' an acceptable choice. _Almost_.”

“– and Kronos was previously known as Michael ‘Mick’ Rory.”

The name rings a bell in the back of Kronos’ mind, pulls strings that Kronos knows for a fact shouldn’t be pulled post-induction. He rears his head back a little, screwing up his face.

“Kronos?”

“I think they messed up the induction,” he admits reluctantly. A failed induction process means _another_ induction process, and he would quite frankly rather be buried alive. “I think I remember that.”

“We are on an unauthorized mission,” Bunya points out gently. “You do not need to inform the Masters of an incidental reawakening until it has been proven to be problematic.”

Kronos nods, thankful for the reprieve. Bunya thankfully changes topics after that, referring to Cold by his moniker and avoiding all mention of real names.

They arrive at Central City with a minimum of fuss, Bunya activating drones to lay a false trail behind them and putting up the shields so they don't leave a temporal trail. 

Kronos arms up, taking his usual assortment of weaponry. He hesitates over it, then straps on the old model gun – some sort of fire-based weapon – as well. Might as well take it along; worst case scenario, it’ll just be useless. Best case, might help him with Cold. 

Cold's seat of government is squat in the middle of what used to be the slum district of Central City but which has now gone rather upmarket very quickly. Ginny helpfully informs them that due to one of Cold's policies, anyone born or raised in the slums still gets housing preference there and has to be bought off by the rich men panting to live in an insipid little squathouse as long as it's close to the center of power.

"Unexpectedly generous," Bunya says.

"The guy's a troll," Kronos says. 

Getting an entry into Cold's court is more difficult. The waiting line just to get in the gawker's seats is intense; the wait for an actual audience...

"We could make an appointment today and use the ship to jump forward the four months," Kronos suggests, scowling at the posted list in dismay. He’s hoping that the timeline does one of its little quirks of good fortune right about now, or he’s _never_ going to get in to see the guy.

"The secretaries are not even bribable," Bunya marvels. "Such excellent service, and for a supervillain dictator, no less; your man Cold is clearly quite a marvel. I must see him."

"Maybe we should just go inside, through, like, a window or something."

"I wouldn't if I were you," a barefoot woman dressed all in white says as she passes by. "The windows are armed. And guarded. What type of armor is that you're wearing? I'm not sure I recognize it."

"Long story, birdie," Kronos grunts.

That makes the woman, who had been on her way, pause and turn back to them. "I'm sorry, do I know you?" she asks.

"Why do you ask?" he asks cautiously.

"It's just that the women in my family are known as the Canaries," she explains. "Black for my sister; white for me. It's not particularly well known here, so I wondered..."

"No," Kronos says. "I just call some women that."

"It could be because of you," Bunya says thoughtfully. "You don't actually _know_ , you know; you might know this White Canary."

"Just Sara is fine," the woman says. "Have you lost your memory?"

"Bit more complicated than that, but yes. Something you're familiar with?"

"I spent some time without a soul after an incomplete resurrection," she says, making a face. 

"Why're you here instead of with Darkh?" Kronos asks, curiously. “I thought he was Magic-Man around here.”

"Technically, I'm a hostage," Sara says with a shrug. "Realistically, Cold just likes to spit in Darkh's eye any chance he gets. He really hates when people try to come over all paternal, and Darkh blew his first two chances to stop, and Cold only ever gives two. I'm pretty sure the only reason Cold hasn’t actually murdered him for it yet is because the Malefactors have certain rules about murdering each other. In my case, Darkh has a grudge against my family and associated friends, and Cold's been taking every opportunity to smuggle us away from him ever since, just to stick it to him. He's got me, my sister, my sister's ex's girlfriend's boyfriend..."

"Really?" Bunya says, intrigued. She's always been weirdly into soap operas. 

"It's complicated. Cold runs the Malefactor tech R&D wing, so he commandeered both Felicity and Ray; Darkh didn't object because he hates Felicity's other boyfriend Oliver most of all - that's my sister's ex - and he hasn't realized yet that Cold's gathering us up - wait, why am I telling you all of this?"

"Truth serum," Bunya says. "I wear it as perfume."

“You’re joking,” Sara says flatly, her eyes narrowing.

“You should try drinking with her,” Kronos advises dryly. “Grown men weep and card-carrying spies sob out the stories of their life on her shoulder.”

“Never met anyone who could out drink me,” Sara says, crossing her arms. 

Bunya smiles. “I’d be willing to give it a try.”

“Can you flirt after we find my possibly-soulmate?” Kronos says plaintively. Sitting around while other people eye-fuck always gives him hives. 

“Hey now, we didn’t say anything about soulmates,” Sara says, brightening. “Who’re you hunting? You Iris’s newest boytoy? Or - no, maybe someone else, someone a bit more male? Mardon, older or younger? Cisco? _Allen_?”

“Leonard Snart,” Kronos says, and Sara blanches.

“I’m…pretty sure you’re not soulmates,” she says delicately, suddenly speaking as if to an incredibly stupid child. “He’s not really the soulmate type.”

Kronos looks down at himself: covered in armor, check, multiple types of weapons, check, over six feet tall and built like a snowplow, check… “And what about me says that I _am_?”

“Well, you’re looking for one,” Sara points out. “But, um, yeah. What makes you think you and _Cold_ are soulmates? Because I’ve gotta say, even his fanclub isn’t so stupid as to actually try to ask him out.”

“Of course he has a fanclub,” Kronos growls, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling.

“In this case,” Bunya says to Sara, “we actually have reason to believe it is true. There are certain – indicators. I assure you, we were as surprised as you.”

“You’re still doomed,” Sara says brightly. “But hey, who am I to stop you? If you want a short-cut to being even more doomed, follow me – I can get you into his presence a lot quicker than the official line.” She eyes Bunya thoughtfully. “And you come out with me for drinks later.”

“Done,” Bunya says.

“Ugh,” Kronos says.

“You’re here to find your _soulmate_ ,” Sara points out.

“Still ugh,” Kronos replies firmly. “Romance is for losers.”

“I’d say maybe you are Cold’s soulmate,” Sara says, shaking her head. “But that would involve believing Cold is human enough to have one, which I don’t. He’s got, like, three emotions: amusement at someone’s expense, utter hatred – and people subject to that don’t tend to last long – and cold-blooded efficiency.”

“Is efficiency really an emotion?”

“It is the way Cold does it. He likes having things run _right_ , and he doesn’t mind icing pieces of you off until you get with the picture. Anyway, come with me – I have a bunch of friends who work in tech R&D: Cisco, Felicity, Allen. Cold visits the labs fairly regularly to see what they're up to which, honestly, isn't actually paranoia, because those kids are _cra-zy_.”

The labs are notably more impressive than Kronos might have expected for this era, though he assumes this is partially because of Cold’s consolidation of his power base here. There’s a handful of people there, scientist types: a short guy with hair that falls to his shoulders, wearing an old Star Trek-themed shirt ("Where no ~~man~~ PERSON has gone before!") is chattering away with an older man, skinny as a rake, and another guy, sitting in a wheelchair: young, brunette, dorky grin. 

"Hey, Ramon," Sara calls with a smile. "Wells, Allen; good to see you both. Have I got a story for you!"

"And new friends too, I see," the older man says, shaking his head. "Too much to hope that they're actually scientists."

"Pssh," Sara says. "You think I'd waste scientists on you? I'd give them to Ray and Felicity over in comp-sci." 

"Awww, but Sara -" the first guy whines.

"Big and bulky here thinks Cold's his soulmate," Sara steamrolls over him, smiling perkily.

All three men turn and gawk at Kronos.

"That bad, huh?" he says, amused despite himself. This Cold must be a right bastard.

"He just doesn't seem the type," the older man says. "Please ignore Sara's manners, I'm Harrison Wells, the young man to my right is Cisco Ramon; we're the R&D lab heads. This -" he nods at the man in the wheelchair, "- is Barry Allen; he assists us with chemical analyses and research."

"Gotta be good for something," Barry says ruefully. He has a terrible scar taking up much of the side of his head, white and webbed out like lightening, extending up as high as his forehead and curling over his cheek and down his neck. One eye is clouded, clearly at least partially blind, but it still follows along with the other so it can’t be entirely gone. “Call me Barry, please.”

"Barry Allen?" Bunya says, frowning. "No, that's wrong. You're in a wheelchair?"

"Yes - why?" Barry says, looking abruptly wary.

"I - no reason," Bunya says, abruptly remembering that she was talking to civilians. "I had thought you were - more mobile."

"You remember the Flash?" Cisco says, eyes going wide. 

" _You_ remember the Flash?" Bunya shoots back.

"Who the hell is the Flash?" Kronos grunts.

"The Flash was an influential superhero of the early twenty-first century," Bunya says. "I rather enjoyed reading about him; Kronos, he's Gideon's - you know."

"If this is about me inventing Gideon, I already know I'm supposed to do that," Barry says quietly. 

"You do?" Bunya says, clearly taken aback.

"Eobard Thawne used Gideon to come back to the past," Barry explains. "That's the only reason I'm still alive, so that he can make sure that I don't cause a broken time loop." He smiles wryly. "And Cisco here thinks I'm a hero, even though I only did a little before it all went - wrong."

"I keep telling you, Barry, you were a hero for a lot longer than a few times," Cisco says, clearly retreading an old argument. He looks at Kronos and Bunya. "I'm a meta, and I vibe other timelines. And I distinctly remember Barry being a hero for _years_ , not months."

"You're right, he should be," Bunya says. "Years and years. What happened to you?"

“Eobard Thawne,” Barry replies with a resigned shrug. “I was basically a punching bag-slash-battery for him to steal speed from until my powers – ah – abruptly stopped working.” He gestures at his face. “Very abruptly.”

“That’s wrong,” Bunya says. “Your powers are tied to the Speed Force; they shouldn’t _stop working_. And certainly not yet; you have – or you should have – decades of heroism ahead of you.”

"And how do you know that?" Wells asks, arching his eyebrows.

"We're time travelers," Bunya says. "We're here because we have reason to believe that Kronos and Cold were –”

"Soulmates," Sara chimes in.

"- close," Bunya concludes firmly. 

"Who are you, anyway?" Cisco asks. "Take off that mask, Kronos."

Kronos hates taking off his mask while on active duty, but - a timeline-reading metahuman? He might be able to help get him to Cold, get at what they were before. He pulls off his mask.

"Holy crap, you're _Heatwave_ ," Cisco blurts out, then slaps his hands over his mouth. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh _shit_..."

The Heatwave moniker must have come from the flamethrower strapped to Kronos' side, and the weird twisting feeling in his gut get every time he looks at it for too long. It’s attractive and repulsive and anxiety-inducing and joy-causing, all at once. 

“Cisco?” Barry asks, concerned; the meta just kept repeating “oh shit” on repeat like a broken record.

“I think you’ve broken him,” Sara says, also frowning. “Cisco, what’s the matter?”

“You don’t understand, it’s _Heatwave_ ,” Cisco hisses. “Captain Cold and Heatwave, opposites and accompanying halves! There isn’t a nearby universe where you find one without the other, except maybe this one: they’re rivals, they’re partners, they’re enemies, they’re possibly even lovers, damned if I know, they’re _anything_ , but it’s like – it’s like – it’s _peanut butter and jelly_ , man!”

“So we _are_ soulmates,” Kronos drawls, inexplicably pleased at the depth of their intertwining, him and this Cold. Not just across time, but across the multiverse. “There you go, birdie.”

“I wouldn’t have expected that,” Sara says agreeably. 

“You guys don’t _understand_!” Cisco wails. 

“Tell us what the problem is, then,” Wells says, crossing his arms.

“It’s _Cold_. You know how sometimes he calls me up to his office, late at night? The weird calls, the ones that aren’t scheduled, the, like, two in the morning ones?”

“Yeah?” Barry says, nodding. “What about them?”

“Well, in those calls, Cold doesn’t want to know about tech stuff or R&D stuff or even meta stuff,” Cisco says. “He wants me to vibe for him – about _him_.” He jabs a finger at Kronos. “He’s obsessed with him, or the idea of him; has been ever since I first mentioned it.”

“Seems fine to me,” Kronos says, sharing a look with Bunya. Looks like this quest might not be so hopeless after all.

“He’s – it’s serious, you don’t understand – we’re talking about a full on _psychopath_ and his favorite obsession –”

“Be quiet!” Sara suddenly cries out. “He’s coming!”

Kronos turns towards the door.


	3. Chapter 3

The man, when he arrives, was everything advertised. He was as beautiful as Ginny's picture, lean and sharp-eyed, the curve of his face as lovely as the body he insisted on concealing with a bulky parka and all-black clothing. And his expression - 

Well, Kronos could see why people thought that cruelly detached expression, the curl of a supercilious sneer, was something to be feared. The man exuded cold-blooded brutality; he would very clearly as soon kill you as look at you. The fearsome cold gun - a formidable weapon, for sure, but the specs of it wouldn't be nearly as deadly in the hands of someone less intelligent, less _creative_ , than Cold - was strapped to his leg, an unconscious echo of the way Kronos had strapped his old, forgotten weapon in.

"You seem to be doing a lot of standing around," Cold drawls, voice thick with casual malice and threat. "I don't know why you would do that, when I know I have you on half a dozen projects."

His eyes skate over the familiar faces in his lab to land on Kronos and Bunya; the movement is so effortless, so natural, that Kronos immediately knows it for a lie. Cold has been tracking them since he entered the room, possibly before; he doesn't know who they are and he doesn't like that. They've trespassed on a paranoid man's domain; and his visit to the labs is not chance.

Time wants to happen.

Before Cold can say anything cutting, before Bunya can be arch and superior as she always is, before any of the lab rats can blurt out something stupid, especially that Cisco kid, Kronos steps forward and Cold's eyes snap to his face.

They stare at each other for a long moment, and it's as if everything else has fallen away - they're strangers, never met in this life; Kronos has only ever seen Cold in a photograph, Cold has never seen Kronos at all, but the moment is still somehow overwhelmingly powerful. Electric. Charged with a thousand what-might-have-beens, begging to come back into the timeline.

Cold swallows, his throat working, and Kronos doesn't need to be told that a sign of discomfort like that from Cold is almost unheard of. 

"Who -" Cold starts, then stops. Licks those lovely red lips like he's starving.

A lot like how Kronos felt, when he'd first heard of this man. A feast of feelings, in a life empty of them.

"They call me Kronos," Kronos says. "But - once - I was called Mick Rory. Heatwave. And I _knew you_."

"We've never met," Cold says, his icy expression never flickering.

"No," Kronos says. "They kept it from happening."

"Who?" Cold asks, his eyes narrowing in calculation.

"Kronos, I don't think -" Bunya starts, an unwelcome interruption in their mutual reverie.

Cold's hand goes to his gun; Kronos lifts his hands. "She's helping," he says gruffly. "We're here to fix it."

"I'm willing to listen," Cold says. 

"Holy crap, Cold has a heart," Sara says.

Then she cries out, because she has a knife in her gut. Kronos is good, _very_ good, and he barely saw Cold move. The guy's expression didn't so much as twitch as he causally gutted a woman; it clearly barely pings on his radar.

Kronos – no, _Mick Rory_ – pings, though. _Does he ever_.

Kronos can feel himself getting hard, for the first time in longer than he likes to think about, and he's distantly aware that his induction should have cut off his tendency to find violence arousing - it's anti-social behavior, per the Time Masters' rules - but damn, that was beautiful. 

Maybe it's the sheer dominance of it, the way Cold is so clearly master of his domain. The way everyone in it is his possession, to do with as he pleases. Or maybe it was the beauty of the throw, the casual flick of the wrist, a portrait in physicality and skill. Or maybe it's just this man, _this man_ , who is nothing to Kronos, and yet he is everything, as well. 

"Sara, don't pass out -" Barry is saying urgently. Bunya is kneeling beside the woman, the bloody knife on the floor beside her, scanning her with her arm-piece and ordering Goody to start basic repairs.

"I didn't hit anything vital," Cold says disdainfully. "There's no need to panic to such an unnecessary degree." 

Kronos nods. Makes sense.

God, Cold's pretty.

"She made a _joke_ ," Wells says savagely. "There was no need to -"

"She lives because I let her," Cold says, his voice as frosty as his name. "Her and her family. Most of the time, she amuses me, so I give her certain freedoms – and the same for the rest of you. If I weren’t still amused, she’d be dead, not bleeding."

"She interrupted," Kronos says, nodding.

"That's no reason to _stab her_ ," Cisco exclaims.

"Sure it is," Kronos says. Couldn't these people see how _important_ this moment was? 

Cold's gaze returns to Kronos and there's something approving in it. Kronos - fearsome bounty hunter and time traveler, killer and kidnapper, veteran of more years than he can count - almost shivers in delight.

"There," Bunya says to Sara. "You should be better now."

"Thanks," Sara says shakily, smiling. "We've got tech that can handle stab wounds, but you saved me a trip to the infirmary and a nasty scar."

"So I'm going to get that drink?" Bunya says, almost teasingly.

"You'll get more than that," Sara says, batting her eyelashes.

"Ugh," Kronos says, and Cold arches his eyebrows, his face bored. He reaches for Kronos, black-gloved fingers just barely brushing on Kronos' armor.

"Come with me," Cold says, and Kronos is drawn after him as if by an invisible rope.

The others, concerned with Sara, do not notice their departure.

Cold leads him to a private room and turns upon him, his eyes bright and _hungry_ and Kronos can't not kiss him. Cold kisses in exactly the opposite of the way he kills: passion and rage and feeling and _fire_ -

Oh, god, Mick had forgotten fire, fire, beautiful fire - he hadn't seen it in years, forgotten just like everything else - he doesn't know how that happened; it was his friend, his oldest friend, before everything else, but then he forgot it, everything dark and grey like ashes, but this was like the spark of a flame catching alight - 

"Were we lovers?" he asks impulsively, drawing back; he had no information, nothing, but Cold had access to a meta who can recall the correct timeline.

"Better," Cold says. "We were _partners_."

Mick has to kiss him again. 

After a moment they both draw back, the electric pull between them still strong, still magnetic, crackling with heat. 

Kronos masters himself with an effort; Cold blinks once or twice, regaining his icy demeanor. Kronos is complimented that he lost it at all.

For a few moments there, in Cold's embrace, Kronos hadn't been himself. He'd been someone else: wild and free and untamed, vicious and caring by turn, the full measure of a man - good, bad, and maybe a little crazy. Mick Rory, the man he used to be.

The feeling - the sensation of life like a flame flickering to life in the dark - is addictive. 

He _wants_ to be that man again: but it seems like he can only be that man when he's with _this_ man. 

Kronos looks at Cold.

Cold is studying him intently, his face revealing nothing, but if Cisco's words were correct, Kronos thinks he might be feeling the same way Kronos did.

"What happened?" Cold asks finally. "You said they kept us apart. Who?"

"The Time Masters," Kronos says, feeling the truth spill from his lips like he's high on Bunya's perfume. Bounty Hunters are not permitted to tell of the Time Masters' presence to civilians; that is one of their premiere rules. Civilians are pawns to be moved on the Time Masters' chess board, and pawns sometimes become angry at the realization of their status, and so they are meant to see the acts of the Bounty Hunters and the Time Masters to be like a force of nature: unpredictable, random, unstoppable. 

The Time Masters fancied their decisions to be acts of nature, and so themselves as gods.

Kronos would spit in the eye of any god that tried to keep him from Cold. 

"The Time Masters," he says again, his voice rough with disuse and thick with unfamiliar emotion. With breaking the chains of his induction, his servitude to the Time Masters, the chains that have kept them apart. "They manipulate the timeline: they have ships that travel through time, and they say their duty is to keep people from messing with what is and what should be, but they do plenty of their own meddling, too. Time wants to happen. When they help time happen, it goes well for them. When they don’t…"

"Did time want us to meet?"

"You aren't the king of the world in the original timeline," Kronos says. He's never been one to shy from the hard parts of the truth. "No Legion of Doom, nothing like that. But we're partners."

"How long?" Cold asks, ignoring the earlier part of the sentence. "Cisco could only tell me that we were scarcely seen one without the other."

"I don't know," Kronos says, the bitterness rising up. "They tore us apart, even though we were intertwined."

"Intertwined?"

"Time traveler term. It's - something big, something important." Kronos licks his dry lips. He's only got one chance to explain this right. "Time wants to happen, and to happen in its own way - every man his own fate. But sometimes people can overcome fate and bind themselves to another person, tie themselves and their fate so strongly together that even Time has to bow before them and treat them as one timeline, not two."

“I like that,” Cold says. “You and me against the world.”

“So now you know,” Kronos says, suddenly feeling shrunken and vulnerable and empty now that the truth poured out of him like a sieve.

“I don’t know everything,” Cold says. His eyes glitter. “I don’t know _you_. Not yet.”

“Not yet?” Kronos asks, crossing his arms and smirking a little. “You wanna get to know me, huh?”

“Oh, I’m going to get to know you,” Cold replies, and his voice makes it clear that he has no doubt. “I’m going to take you and I’m going to keep you. Then we’re going to find these people who kept us apart and I’m going to shatter their hearts in their chests.”

A pang runs through Kronos’ mind, sharp as a shock. “You can’t do that,” he objects automatically. As a Bounty Hunter, he’s programmed to fight off threats to the Time Masters as well as to the timeline.

“You’ll find there’s very little a determined man can’t do, and that I can be _very_ determined.”

“We can fix the timeline,” Kronos offers. “That’s what time wants to happen, after all; that’s why it pulled me here, so that we can be together again.”

“I don’t let anyone or anything govern me, Time Masters or timeline,” Cold says, and he smiles. It’s not a kind smile. “There are no strings on me.”

“You don’t understand –”

Cold reaches up and puts a gloved hand on Kronos’ cheek. “I understand entirely,” he says, and his voice is somehow painfully earnest. His eyes are incredibly blue right now. “They took you from me, and they hurt you, and now you protect them. Trust me, no one understands that more than me.” Cold’s smile broadens. “But we’re going to break through all that. You and me, _Mick_. You and me against the world. Against time itself if we need to.”

Kronos swallows. “Yeah,” he says, even though his brain hurts like a red hot poker’s been shoved into it, screaming that he needs to report this potential threat to his Masters. The pain is irrelevant when weighed against those cool blue eyes. “ _Yeah_. You and me.”

Cold kisses him this time, hot and fierce. “Give me twenty-four hours,” he says, his voice purring like a promise. “And I’ll have a plan to take them down.”

“You realize that you might lose everything, right?” Kronos says, hating to bring it up but wanting to be sure. He couldn't bear it to be weighed against anything less than the whole of the world and found wanting; he has to be this man's _everything_ , the way this man is to him. Cold goes into this eyes wide open or not at all. “I don’t know what we are in the other timeline, but you’re not _this_. You’re not king of Central City, middle America, Kyrgyzstan, the Falklands, and the Pacific Islands; you’re not master of the metahumans and technology –”

“So?”

“You don’t _care_?”

Cold shrugs. “Power’s what you accumulate when you've got nothing else,” he says, and his smile twists until it’s not quite sane. “I have _nothing else_. They took that from me when they took you, these Time Masters of yours. My sister rules the Pacific Islands in my name because she can’t get further away from me than that, I haven’t had a lover in over a decade that doesn’t want to kill me to take my place, and this whole ruling the world shtick gets _boring_ after the first few years. At this point, I’m just accumulating power out of _spite_.”

Kronos can't help but smile. “From what I understand, spite seems to have gotten you pretty far.”

“Meet my colleagues and you’ll understand,” Cold says, rolling his eyes. “You could run a perpetual motion machine on the amount of spite just being around them generates.”

“Bunya’s the only one I can stand from mine,” Kronos offers.

“You’re not sleeping with her, are you?” Cold asks, sounding _almost_ indifferent.

“No,” Kronos says. “Also, she’s being slowly disintegrated by the timeline. You don’t need to worry about her.”

Cold considers this for a long moment. “I can live with slow disintegration,” he finally allows. “Tell me it’s excruciating.”

“It is,” Kronos says, shaking his head a little. Cold’s clearly every bit the sadistic possessive bastard he was reputed to be.

_Good_. 

“So, twenty four hours,” he says, returning to their earlier subject. “You think you can make a plan to take down the Time Masters in that short a time?”

Every time he says it, the pain is less. The induction process is unravelling. 

“Just _watch_ me.”

They return to the R&D labs, because Bunya will start looking for Kronos if they don’t, and Kronos has no intention of sharing Cold with her.

“I trust you’ve stopped whining,” Cold says, sweeping into the room. “I have orders for you.”

Everyone from R&D straightens abruptly, recording devices and notepads appearing in their hands as if by magic. Cold’s got them well-trained – or perhaps it’s simply well-terrified. 

But no, there’s something in the eagerness in which they all leap to attention, the avid expressions on their faces, that say that they’re actually interested in what he has to say. They fear him, that's true, but - and this is the true marvel - they don't hate him. They _admire_ him; they want to please him. Cold must be very, very good at what he does to win the loyalty of such as these. 

Kronos never doubted it for a second. 

“Harry, I want you to work with Kronos’, ah, _friend_ –” Cold can’t quite keep the sneer from his voice, the ache of overwhelming, irrational jealousy manifesting as disdain. “– and get a read on their tech capabilities, as well as a layout of their home base.”

“Bunya, help them,” Kronos says, catching her eyes and pleading with his own. “Use Goody and Ginny to get you any info he needs. I’ll explain later.”

She inclines her head, but her expression makes it clear that he’ll pay for it in time.

“Cisco, I want a survey of all available weaponry that we have, emphasis on explosives. Barry, help him; I'm going to need Cisco's abilities sooner rather than later. Someone ring up Ray and Felicity; I want them on this project as well."

"Yes, boss!" they chorus. 

"Sara, I want you to round up my council - Mardons, Walker, Scudder, the whole lot."

"What, all of them? In person?"

"You heard me."

"Boss, if I do that, the other Malefactors might think you're going to war," Sara protests, though Kronos notices that she keeps her hands over her stomach protectively.

"Let them," Cold says, confident smirk curling his lips. "Let them _worry_."

Sara's worry fades and she smiles, bright and bitter and vengeful, when she sees Cold's expression. "Yes, boss!"

"And now, I'm going to have dinner," he says, and those from his world all nod knowingly.

"Dinner?" Bunya asks.

"He can't be launching a war if he's having dinner in public where Eobard can get to him," Wells explains. "It's a demonstration of good faith."

"Malefactors are weird," Cisco adds. "We've got the best one."

"Don't be absurd," Cold says, rolling his eyes.

"Hey, aside from the fact that you're a murderous psychopath, you're doing a pretty going job of running the world," Barry says peacefully. "Not least because if I said anything like that to any of the others, they'd kill me and my family on principle."

Cold rolls his eyes. "I like to see a thing done right, is all," he says dismissively. "Excess murder is unnecessary and counter-productive. Come on, Kronos; you dine with me. You might even get to meet some of my colleagues."

Kronos follows, because he's not letting Cold go expose himself to an assassin as show of _good faith_ if he can help it. He has one of Bunya's micromanipulators, if it comes to that; he'll slow the speedster down and burn him alive.

Just like he'd do to any threat to Cold. Fuck, he’s just met the man already, but he knows that truth, deep in his bones. _No one_ is going to take this man away from him again: not the Time Masters, not Time itself, not even Death.

"So you're ice and I'm fire, huh?" Kronos asks as they stroll to the dining room. 

"That's what Cisco says," Cold says. "I looked you up, you know; you disappear after the fire that killed your family. You just go entirely off the grid and are never seen again."

"That must have been when the Time Masters picked up my younger self and re-wrote the timeline," Mick says. "No wonder my memory's even more twisted than usual for a Hunter."

"Hunters have memory problems?"

"It's a side effect of the induction process," Kronos explains. "They rip out your memories, your social bonds, your undesirable traits - piece by piece, strand by strand - you can see faces disappearing in front of you as you go, then a second later all you remember is that it _was_ a face, one that meant something to you, but you can't remember why -"

"What do they value most, these Time Masters?" Cold asks abruptly.

"Value most?" Kronos says, frowning in thought. "I'm not sure. Ownership of the timeline? Order? The Oculus, I guess."

"The Oculus?"

"They use it to control the timeline: to view it, to change it, to lead people around. They practically worship it."

"Interesting," Cold says. "And it's at your home base?"

"The Vanishing Point, yeah. Why?"

"No reason."

Kronos didn't believe that for a minute. 

"How're you going to make a plan if you're busy eating dinner?" he asks instead, figuring he can always ask more about Cold's sudden interest in the Oculus later.

"I already have a plan," Cold says. "It just needs some details -" He reaches out and catches Kronos' gloved hand in his. "- which you can try to give me over dinner."

"What do you mean try?" Kronos says suspiciously as they walk into the dining room. He wasn't having induction problems any more, not serious ones, anyway. His head pounded every time he thought about it, but Kronos learned long ago that he was easily distracted, even from pain - and Cold is very distracting.

"I haven't taken a lover in five years," Cold says. "I suspect a lot of people are going to want to meet you."

Kronos looks around at the crowd of petitioners that surrounds the dining room table, their eager faces, their happy smiles, and then down at their linked hands.

"You're a such a troll," he says, but he can't keep the fondness out of his voice.

Cold smirks. "Let me know if anyone really bothers you," he instructs, voice calm and even but somehow pitched to carry. "I'll take care of them."

"I'm a grown up bounty hunter, you know," Kronos murmurs. "I can murder people myself."

"But it'll be so much more fun to let me do it for you," Cold says, and there's no arguing with the steel in his tone. 

"Unlike all your little subjects here, Cold, I'm not your property," Kronos reminds him.

Cold only smirks. "No," he says, and his eyes glitter with amusement and more than a little insanity. "You're my _partner_."

Kronos lets himself be led to the table, because what do you say to that?

"You'd better let me kill some for you, too," he finally says, just as they sit.

Cold's abrupt and quickly terminated bark of laughter causes ripples of shock through the room.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing more of this, but I'm not sure how far I'll go with it.


End file.
